


The Lost Child

by Nicor_Fyrweorm



Series: Last of the Time Lords [8]
Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005), Torchwood
Genre: Alien Time Lords (Doctor Who), Cliffhangers, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, I Don't Even Know, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Jack Harkness Has Issues, Post-The Year that Never Was (Doctor Who), Referenced Time War (Doctor Who), The Author Regrets Everything, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Characters Do What They Want, The Master Has Issues (Doctor Who), This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things, Time War Angst (Doctor Who), Timey-Wimey
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-06
Updated: 2020-02-06
Packaged: 2021-02-19 14:06:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22578877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nicor_Fyrweorm/pseuds/Nicor_Fyrweorm
Summary: Amy and Rory wanted for the TARDIS to get fixed so they could go back home and get married. Torchwood Three wanted to keep Cardiff safe as the Rift stabilized and solve a string of gruesome murders. Jack Harkness wanted to protect his team and talk to the Doctor.The Master wanted for humans to stop poking at things they could never understand.Or the one where old friends and old enemies meet again, new friends and new enemies are made, and something vast stirs in the dark.
Relationships: Amy Pond/Rory Williams, Jack Harkness & Team Torchwood, Jack Harkness & The Doctor, Jack Harkness & The Master, Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones, The Master & Amy Pond (Doctor Who), The Master & Rory Williams
Series: Last of the Time Lords [8]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1511825
Comments: 6
Kudos: 50





	The Lost Child

**Author's Note:**

> Beware the tags, things are always darker whenever Torchwood is involved…

It isn't until they are outside and breathing again that Amy explodes. 

“What _the Hell_ happened, Raggedy Man?! Did the TARDIS break down? Were we attacked? Was that a temper tantrum?” she questions, talking a mile an hour while pushing her hair out of her face, messing it up even more than it already was. 

“The TARDIS throws temper tantrums?” Rory asks, startled, as he pushes away from the wall he had been leaning against, patting himself down to make sure he's still in one piece, which results in tiny puffs of dust flying off of his clothes. 

However, Koschei is too busy staring wide-eyed at the locked doors of the TARDIS, smoke swirling behind the window glass as the last echoes of the cloister bell fade away. In one hand he clutches whatever shirt and jacket he took blindly out of the wardrobe in his haste to get back to the control room, while the other holds a pair of shoes he _hopes_ will fit him. 

It had been just nine hours and three minutes since they took off from Sicily when Amy and Rory had finally walked into the control room, back into their original outfits. After half a minute of gawking at the overtly cheerful Time Lord grinning genially at them, they had practically shoved him into the corridor with orders to _get showered and changed, at the very least!_

Well, that had been Amy. Rory had stood behind her awkwardly, fiddling with something in his jacket pocket, before asking if his bruises really were better or if he had simply hidden them away. Once he'd told the humans that no, he really was better, Time Lords heal fast, and no, he wasn't tired, Time Lords don't really need that much sleep, Amy had once more pointed him down the corridor with a no-nonsense look on her face. Koschei had thrown his hands up but turned tail and made for the showers. All calculations and analysis on what little information he had on the cracks were already running, so he told himself he could afford to change out of his tunic and get a snack. 

He was in the wardrobe, clad only in black jeans and socks, and considering the assortment of stupid shirts he could put on to embarrass Rory some more at whatever was left of his stag, when the TARDIS shook hard enough to throw him into the wall. A moment later, the cloister bell started tolling on full, and smoke crawled out of any seams and grates it could find as the ship rattled and jerked as if it was being tossed around by a playful kitten. 

So, Koschei had grabbed the closest things that looked like a shirt and a jacket, as well as a pair of black shoes that looked about his size, and rushed off towards the control center. No need to go around shirtless once this mess was under control, after all, and especially not if they found themselves away from the TARDIS in their attempts to fix her. 

Which is exactly what has happened now. 

Amy and Rory don't appear to be hurt, since they were clinging to the handrails for dear life when he'd rushed into the control room and they're moving fine now, so he hopes it's just bruises and shock. 

Unfortunately, he'd only managed to stabilize the TARDIS' flight and, once they stumbled into whatever passed for a landing, he'd quickly ushered the two humans out before anything more toxic than smoke could fill the control room. 

So, here they are now, stuck outside the TARDIS as she repairs herself, with no idea of what went wrong or where— 

Sucking in a sharp breath, Koschei turns around so quickly that he stumbles, eyes widening in horror before they narrow threateningly as he lets out a litany of the foulest curses he knows in half a dozen languages. 

Fortunately, the TARDIS is still operational enough—or too damaged to work properly, though he tries not to think about it—to still keep up the parental control, if the startled and confused looks on Amy's and Rory's faces, instead of scandalized ones, are any clue. 

“Raggedy Man? What's wrong?” Amy asks once he falls silent, breathing heavily and putting on the t-shirt almost violently as he tries to distract himself. 

… Well, he _tries_ to put the t-shirt on, but judging by the way the collar slips halfway down his arm, he might be doing something wrong. 

“Skaro ablaze, did I grab a dress instead of a shirt?” he asks aloud, pulling his arms out of what he _thinks_ might be the sleeves, before pulling the neon pink front away from his body to try and see what he's dealing with and what's printed on— 

_Rose and Jack smile widely as they stretch the pink eyesore between them with a cry of 'souvenir!', and, laughing, cold hands take the shirt from them with an elated 'fantastic!'_

“Someone I know went to Raxa—Raxacori—coricori-co… Ra-xa-co-ri-co-fa-lla-pa-to-rius and all I got was this lousy t-shirt,” Amy reads as best as she can with a confused frown, while Rory looks more resigned than surprised. “They have this kind of thing on other planets too? Why didn't you get one in your size? Or were you ever _that_ big in another of your faces?” 

“It was a present,” Koschei answers absentmindedly, fiddling with the hem of the Raxacoricofallapatorian size small t-shirt, carefully poking at the echo of the shirt's last seconds before it had been hung up in the wardrobe, and blinking again at Rose's bright smile, the Captain's young face and the Doctor's glee and a hint of mischief as he'd accepted his companions' joke present as if it was actually a serious one. “Rose and Jack got it as a joke,” he adds softly, looking at the other item of clothing he picked up to see if it's another shirt or sweater he could swap this one for. 

This shirt was a present for the Doctor. Regardless of what he'd planned to do with it, it's _the Doctor's,_ in a way that's far more personal than any of the other clothes in the wardrobe. Most of them had belonged to previous companions, or had been bought for a specific occasion or 'just in case'. Sure, Koschei had used the Kolpashan coat the Doctor had worn for much of his sixth regeneration as part of his costume to fetch Rory from his stag, but that was _borrowing_ and this was _claiming._

Even if it is an 'outfit of the day' claim and he'll never put it on again, it still means the memories imprinted on the cloth will wash away, replaced by whichever ones Koschei makes, and another tiny piece of the Doctor will be lost. 

But here and now, a shirtless man will attract more attention than one in a long pink shirt, and that's exactly what Koschei doesn't need. So, with a sigh, he focuses on the other item he grabbed, a well-worn leather jacket, and puts it on, hoping it'll help disguise him by covering most of the neon pink of the— 

_Rose hovers, worried and in denial, while an older woman offers her tea and babbles nonsensically, so it falls to Mickey to cautiously strip the leather jacket off the now lither form of the Doctor, passed out on the bed—_

Koschei feels sick, clinging to the leather jacket now covering _his_ shoulders, and grimacing when he realizes that, no matter how much he wants to, he can't seem to make himself pull it off. 

This was the favored jacket of the Doctor's ninth regeneration. Even more than the souvenir shirt, this jacket _is_ a part of the Doctor. 

But Koschei needs the disguise now, for about twelve hours if they're lucky, or twenty-four if the damage is _that_ bad. Unlike the shirt, this jacket carries more memories— _Rose cheering loudly as she gives him as tight a hug as she can, Jack tripping him when he decides_ he _wants to lead the next dance, the slap of a protective mother, a pat to Mickey's shoulder that almost makes him trip in surprise, the power of the Vortex rushing all around—_ and so one day covering Koschei's shoulders instead won't have that much of an impact. 

Survive. Figure out what happened to the TARDIS, and fix her. Avoid the threat. _Blend in._

So, huffing out a sigh, Koschei lets go of the jacket and puts on the black shoes that are, fortunately, in his size. 

“Raggedy Man? What happened? Where are we?” Amy asks again, calmer this time, as both she and Rory give him intense looks. 

He has worried them, Koschei realizes. Spacing out like that while checking over his clothes, and who knows what kind of faces he had been making, he had worried Amy and Rory. Amy knows him well enough by now to realize when he's hiding some sore aspect of his past, and while Rory is fairly new at this, he has good instincts and, moreover, he's a trained nurse. Knowing when his patients are hiding something has to be second nature for him. 

Part of him bristles at the idea of having 'babysitters'. Regardless of how much he jokes with Amy about that, he has never seriously considered her to be anything more than his guest— _maybe perhaps a friend,_ part of his mind whispers, but he immediately pushes it away because he has _no friends,_ his friends are _dead—_ and while it's alright for Amy to bother him about what she considers bad habits, it's _not_ alright for her to take _his_ health as her own responsibility. Adding Rory to that is even more of an insult. He's a Time Lord, over 1350 years old, and this isn't even his first body, regeneration notwithstanding. 

… Alright, maybe the fact he has already burnt through a whole regeneration cycle, and with his being alive now being the result of him 'cheating', could be a cause of concern, but _still!_

However, the part of Koschei that isn't bristling in annoyance feels oddly warm yet guilty at the same time. He hasn't felt anything this contradicting since— 

_“You're a genius. You're stone cold brilliant, you are. I swear, you really are. But you could be so much more. You could be beautiful. With a mind like that, we could travel the stars. It would be my honor. Because you don't need to own the universe, just see it. To have the privilege of seeing the whole of time and space. That's ownership enough.”_

No, not going there, nope, not now, not later, not _ever._

So, instead, the Mast— _Koschei_ focuses all of his attention back on Amy and Rory and their question. 

“We're in one of the worst places we could have landed in, and the only reason it isn't _the worst_ is because it's 2006,” he answers, snarling, before he catches himself and shakes his head in an attempt to clear it. “At least he's on the other side of town,” he grumbles under his breath, glaring towards where he can feel the _wrongness,_ the distortion that's making time warp grotesquely around it, twisting in ways it should _never_ do, creating an area of uncertainty where _nothing_ and _everything_ is possible. 

“One of the—Is it worse than alien snakes? Or Prisoner Zero? Or—Oh, it's another alien invasion, isn't it?” Rory bemoans, grimacing even as, cautiously, he follows Amy to the entrance of the alley the TARDIS landed in. 

Shifting his screwdriver and the psychic paper from his jeans' pockets to the jacket's inner ones mostly out of habit—the _jacket's_ habit, it feels empty without _something_ in its inner pockets—Koschei scowls but follows after them. 

“And how come it looks like Cardiff?” Amy asks as he joins them, frowning as her eyes dart from the people walking without a worry down the street, and signs in both English and Welsh on shops and street corners. 

“That would be because it _is_ Cardiff.” 

“Cardiff, Wales?” Rory asks, rubbing his eyes before looking at the street again, and Koschei scoffs. 

“No, Cardiff, Mars. Of _course_ it's Wales,” he answers with an eyeroll, earning a pointed look from Amy and a hesitant one from Rory. 

“There's a Cardiff in Mars?” 

“… There'll be, but that's not the point,” he tells them with a huff, slipping his hands in the jacket's pockets to pull it closer to his chest and hide more of the pink shirt, before he walks out into the street and follows the smell of pancakes to what he hopes will be someplace good. “The TARDIS is repairing and I'd rather we avoid trouble until she's done. So, let's get breakfast or dinner or whatever while we wait. You're paying, Nurse Boy.” 

“I am?” 

“Yes, you are.” 

“Yes, I am. Why am I not surprised?” Rory asks aloud, though obviously to himself, so Koschei turns to Amy instead when he feels her eyes on him. 

“What happened to the TARDIS?” she asks once she has his attention, and Koschei can't help but glare again at that spot of _wrongness_ they're slowly leaving behind. 

“There's a time rift in Cardiff, and some idiots who fancy themselves alien experts poke at it every now and then. Something happened here not long ago and the Rift is restless. The TARDIS got caught in a wave of temporal anomaly, pushing her out of her flight path and damaging her. Fortunately, the Rift radiation is an excellent fuel source, so she'll be back to fully operational status in twelve to twenty-four hours,” he explains with a tired sigh, letting his shoulders drop and forcing his scowl into something less menacing that, judging by Amy's grin, probably looks a lot like a pout. 

“Aw, don't look like that, Raggedy Man. Just think of all the Welsh food we can try now that we're here,” she jokes, bumping her shoulder against his, while Rory scrunches his nose. 

“Hey, we're talking about _my_ wallet and I've seen him eat. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, especially if we need to book a hotel for the night,” he tells them, lifting his hands in the universal 'stop' gesture. 

“Cheer up, Nurse Boy. Making the TARDIS habitable for humans is always quite high on the list of repairs, so we might be able to spend the night there. Once I've got a place to put you in, I can help with the repairs, so it will go faster then,” he explains with a grin, and, despite rolling his eyes, Rory nods in acceptance. 

“What do you mean, someplace to put us in? _You_ are the one who gets in trouble, Raggedy Man!” Amy protests with a grin, poking his nose with a finger that Koschei _almost_ manages to swat away before she pulls back. 

“That's because I'm trying to keep _you_ safe. And quit calling me that, call me Harry,” he huffs with a scowl, straightening self-assuredly and refusing to think about whether Amy had a point with her last statement. 

“Harry? As in Harold Saxon?” Amy asks, wide-eyed in surprise while Rory looks more curious than anything. 

“No, as in Harriet Jones,” Harry answers with a growing smirk, excited to finally tell someone about this, because the wizened Doctor had only given him a judgmental look when he'd explained about his reasoning during the Year that Never Was, instead of the shock and horror he had been expecting. “She was supposed to usher in a new Golden Age for the United Kingdom, but she messed with the Doctor.” 

And that said, Harry—Koschei likes 'Harry', far better than any other name he's chosen so far, maybe he'll keep it—falls silent and lets his words sink in, waiting for the shock and the horror as the puny humans realize their precious _Doctor_ is actually not as much of a saint as they thought he was. 

A second later, Amy gawks and Rory leans so far away from him that he's forced to take a stumbling step to keep his balance, so Harry's grin grows, pleased. 

“Oh my God. You blew up her house,” Rory stammers, pointing a finger at Harry more in disbelief than accusation, and all the pride he'd felt turns to confusion. 

“What? No, she was simply deposed. What are you talking about?” he asks, confused, as he looks between Amy and Rory, stopping in their walk as he loses the trail of the pancakes, taking just a second to ubicate something better than Chinese takeover before he steers them towards the mouth-watering scent of roasted chicken. 

“Well, her house blew up last year. It was in the news. They said it was a gas leak,” Rory explains with a shrug, calmer now that he knows Harry didn't have any part in the late Prime Minister's death. 

However, something in Rory's statement makes Harry tense and look at him with narrowed eyes. 

“ _When_ was that?” he asks, remembering Amy's complete lack of recognition upon seeing the Daleks. 

That was last year too, and a 'gas leak' seems an awfully convenient way to cover up 'death by extermination'. Or, if what he suspects is the case here, 'death by unknown alien activity'. 

Rory frowns, looking to Amy for help in answering Harry's question, but she looks just as lost as her fiancé. 

_I hate it when I'm right. … Alright, no, I don't, but I hate it this once._

“Okay, then _maybe_ it was my fault,” he groans as he rubs his face, grimacing as the treacherous thought of _how_ Dalek Caan broke through the time lock comes back from the dark corner he'd shoved it into. 

How else could anything get into as strong a time lock as that around the Time War, if not by using the _one_ moment in time when it was weakened by Gallifrey being pulled out of it? 

And how did Gallifrey get pulled out of the time lock? With _an idiot_ who thought putting a nonstop beat into the head of one of his people to drive him into madness, to the point he would be desperate enough to break the Time War's time lock and destroy the whole of time to get rid of said beat. 

_If you weren't dead, Rassilon, I'd kill you **again.**_

“How could that _maybe_ be your fault?” Amy asks softly, frowning in confusion but with no judgement in her eyes, while Rory's whole face is scrunched into something that's both wary and totally uncomprehending at the same time. 

“There might have been an invasion and planet-napping that wouldn't have happened if I hadn't tried something utterly stupid that one time,” he answers vaguely, waving a hand in a nondescript gesture even as his shoulders pull up to his ears against his will. 

He is _not_ ashamed of what he did with the Immortality Gate, he had wanted to get rid of the accursed drums and, when he realized they were a link to Gallifrey, _he wanted his planet back._ It was inconsequential whether Rassilon had been pulling the strings all along, Gallifrey was the Master's home, estranged as he was, and he _wanted it back._ Once it was back, he could then _decide_ to just ignore it and go about his business if he wanted, but Gallifrey would still be _there._

However, he _is_ ashamed of… 

_“We're the only two left. There's no one else. I-I'll do it! I'll come with you, spend the rest of my life in the TARDIS, locked away. I'll do it!_ Regenerate!” 

He couldn't save him. 

_“Get out of the way.”_

After giving up _everything_ for him, he still _couldn't save him._

 _“I can bring_ you _back!”_

But that's going to change now. 

He has a way to fix things, and _no one_ will stop him this time. No Dalek, Rassilon or— 

“—Hell? We were invaded? How come we didn't hear about that?” Rory asks, wide-eyed and mouth hanging open in disbelief. “How many times have we been invaded?” 

Harry can't help it. Looking at his surprise, and Amy's astonishment, the only thing he can do is laugh. 

“You humans with your primitive brains. You are so oblivious! There have been _so many_ invasion attempts right in your faces and you never even noticed. Remember that time with the daffodils?” he asks them with a huge grin, but at their lost expressions, Harry realizes he forgot about one tiny detail of that misadventure. “Ah, no, wait. You hadn't been born that far back.” 

“… _Daffodils_ tried to invade the planet?” Rory asks in disbelief, gawking, while Amy analyzes Koschei in an attempt to see if he's trying to trick them. 

“Of course not,” Harry scoffs, giving Rory his best disappointed look. “A plastic hive mind tried to invade the planet with plastic daffodils.” 

Daffodils invading Earth. _Please,_ what a ridiculous thought. 

“Who looks at plastic daffodils and thinks _hey, this would be an excellent weapon?!”_ Amy questions with something that can either be confusion or disgust, though it's probably both. 

And Koschei _beams_ at her. Little Amelia Pond, asking the right questions! Sure, the attitude is not the best, but she's proven to be a quick learner, and Koschei's willing to work with that. Rory's a hard-worker with an open mind, so, when Koschei gestures grandly as he answers, he makes sure to include him too. 

“Exactly! It's genius! The one thing they never suspected!” he tells them, and while Amy still looks skeptical, Rory blinks before tilting his head with a lift of his eyebrows that's a blatant _well, that's a good point._ “Of course, the Nestene then decided that it would be easier to just kill everyone, so there we were, the Master and the Doctor fighting side by side one more time!” 

A police car rushes past with its siren wailing loudly, but the noise quickly lowers to match the whines of the Beacon Hill Telescope control room echoing all around them, muting yet matching the Nestene transfer via earthen telescope that the Master had managed to rig and is now trying to figure out how to stop – or, rather, how to defeat the Nestene or slow them down long enough to run back to his TARDIS, reinstall the dematerialization circuit, and get off of this doomed planet. 

But then the Doctor reaches for him, talking about _preventing_ the Nestene's arrival with polarity changes that he would have never considered because _changing the polarity whilst the transfer shift is still open, risking blowing us up alongside the telescope and the Nestene_ isn't exactly what he had in mind, even with as many changes he has had to make to the plan – but when he turns to say that, the Doctor's time feelers brush against his, _pleading_ for him to help with the frequencies and transmitter wavelengths because he doesn't _know_ how to, and there's no time for him to figure it out _and_ keep everything stable while he takes care of the polarity change. 

And while the Master voices his doubt about the plan, he still reaches back when he feels the tremors in the Doctor's feelers, wraps his own reassuringly around them like the old times, and he finally _sees it._

No matter how much the Master enjoys matching wits with the Doctor across a battlefield, or how he'll keep trying to kill him—actually, to force him to regenerate, but no one will hear him say that aloud because it doesn't have the same impact _death_ has—regardless of what happens now. The only thing the Master enjoys even more than fighting against the Doctor is fighting _alongside_ him. 

So, he agrees to the plan, and, though they don't look at each other again, they never break their feelers' contact, exchanging the minutiae that they have no time to speak aloud as they work to keep the signal and power levels stable for the polarity switch. And, underneath all that, there's an undertone of electricity, of _excitement_ as they face this new enemy, the pale formless creature slowly taking shape— 

“The Master?” 

And he's suddenly in the middle of a street, surrounded by humans, no sign of the Doctor or Lethbridge-Stewart or the Nestene— 

“What? Where—?” he asks, looking around quickly and taking in all the details—there are Welsh words on a shop sign and Koschei immediately remembers they're on Cardiff, 2006. “Right, sorry. I got lost in thought,” he tells Amy with a scowl, rubbing his face with a hand before taking in a deep breath and turning a corner to keep en route for the pancake place. 

“We noticed,” Amy answers with a grin, though her amusement soon turns to hesitation. “I thought those were some of your old names. The Master and the Captain…” 

“Oh, Skaro, no!” he hurries to tell her as he scrunches his nose, shuddering mostly for show, but also because the wind turned and now he can only smell boiled Brussels sprouts instead of roasted chicken. “The Captain was our instructor, back when we first started as Time Lords. She got promoted not long after and took up the name the General.” 

“And what about the Master?” Amy asks after a nod, and while she's curious, Rory is frowning in confusion by her side. 

“He said 'the Master and the Doctor', Amy. Of course he wasn't the Master,” Rory tells her, though Koschei stays silent, listening to the words that sound muted somehow, as if he was underwater. 

He remembers that awful night all alone in the infirmary, limbs sore and face and chest aflame where the knife had cut. He remembers the anger fueling the drums after the Captain's scolding, how unmerited it was because they _had_ been careful, it was _the Captain's_ fault for not telling them more about the threat they were there to track and incapacitate. He remembers the flash of hot embarrassment as he'd heard the whispers of the rest of the squad, how he had _needed_ saving and how _pathetic_ he'd been, getting captured by such _primitive_ aliens. He remembers the fear when he'd come to his senses only to find himself strapped down, with someone leaning hungrily over him, blade in hand, and the satisfaction of blowing his captor's head off as soon as Theta had incapacitated the guards. 

He remembers how all those feelings had festered in his chest that night in the infirmary, after Theta had been sent away, and the promise he'd made himself. No more humiliation or shame. No more pain or fear. He would never again let panic take over him when the drums beat too quickly, and he would never again let his temper cloud his judgement when the drums beat too loudly. From then on, Koschei would be _the Master_ of his own destiny. 

He had thought he'd only stumbled along the way, running away too early at times, not thinking as deeply as he should have some others, but after the Christmas of 2009… 

_“You are diseased, albeit a disease of our own making.”_

“No. I never was,” he whispers with a soft sigh, shoulders drooping under what feels like the combined weight of all the planets in Kasterborous. 

The Master. The Master of _what?_ He had never had any control, no matter how much he tried, how far he strayed. In the end, he was always fated to antagonize the Doctor, to end up on Earth that fateful Christmas of 2009, in such a pathetic state that he would do _anything_ at that point to get some semblance of control over his life. 

Even breaking the time lock around the worst war the universe would ever see. 

He's pretty sure neither Amy nor Rory have caught his whispered words, but they are still bothered enough by his 'silence' that Rory actually raises his voice with his next _casual_ question, trying way too hard to sound 'normal'. Koschei's standards for the human race aren't exactly high, but Rory has surely broken a record on the _how much more pathetic can a species get_ scale. 

“ _So!_ What's with the whole 'no names, only titles' thing? I mean, Captain who?” 

“That's – Actually, that's a _great_ question,” Amy agrees with a more natural curiosity after her initial overtly-enthusiastic response. 

Koschei – no, wait, it was Harry, wasn't it? Yes, Harry. _Anyway,_ Harry looks between them for a second, feeling his lips twist into a grin, and, with a _what the heck,_ he finally huffs and chuckles before straightening. 

Awkward they may be, but they're still asking good questions. 

“Nothing. Just the Captain.” 

That doesn't mean they're going to get the right answers, though. The pouts and mounting confusion are way more amusing than any expression of understanding. And Harry is going to drag _this one_ out for as long as he can and then some. 

Humans don't have the same biology as Time Lords, nor the same understanding of the universe. If Harry ever has to explain the deal behind Gallifreyan names to such an oblivious race as is humanity, he'd better make sure he has a couple _weeks_ free to do it properly. It's going to be all or nothing, there are no half-assed explanations when it comes to names. 

Of course, as mentioned, Amy's deadpan look and Rory's deepening frown only make it more likely that Harry _won't_ explain. It's just so fun to lead the humans in circles, watching them scramble around like mice in a maze or, occasionally, headless chickens! 

“But what about when she was promoted to General?” 

“Just the General.” 

“But how many generals were there? Didn't it get confusing?” 

“Oh, there were many generals, but only one was called the General. There was another that went by Fred,” Harry explains with a serene grin, but not even he has enough self-restraint not to cackle when Amy and Rory give him their best deadpan looks in unison. 

Alright, so Romana hadn't been a general, but given her insistence on using her full name _when speaking,_ the Master had had to figure out an alternative. Gallifreyan names are spoken easily enough in Gallifreyan or through visual or telepathic communication, but in any other language? Not so much. 

Good thing she'd mentioned that the Doctor had given her the alternative of 'Fred' when she had traveled with him in his fourth regeneration. Most of the time, the mere chance to call her that had been the only moment of cheer between periods of fighting. 

'Fred' is such an amusing name… He needs to find someone called Fred and call _them_ Romana. Now _that_ will make his day. 

However, his actual predicament is more about the grin Amy is directing at him and less about what other amusing expressions Harry can draw out of his companions. 

That's the issue of traveling with someone for a while. They learn _exactly_ where to strike, and, knowing the kind of situations Amy has been around for, Harry feels his stomach clench with dread when he sees her open her mouth— 

“I think I prefer 'the Master'. That's _kinky.”_

—in case it's something _like that._

 _Kinky_ is not the worst he's heard about the name he chose, but the _way_ she says it, shuffling her shoulders and wagging her eyebrows, and the way Rory _squeaks_ her name, completely scandalized, still manage to put a blush on Harry's face. He quickly forces it down with ease, of course, but Amy has caught it, what with her eyes never leaving his face. 

Now, anyone else would laugh or poke some more at it, but not Amy. Oh, no, _not_ Amy, because _Amy_ is a _kissogram,_ which means she has lost any sense of embarrassment when it comes to making people blush or laugh. 

And so, Amy drapes herself over Rory's shoulders, practically _melting_ atop her very flustered fiancé, and, aware of Harry's keen hearing, actually proceeds to _demonstrate_ just how _kinky_ she thinks his name is by whispering in Rory's ear. 

“Oh, Master, please…” 

_“Regenerate. Just regenerate. Please. Please! Just regenerate. Come on.”_

Warm arms that should feel cool, one heart gone and the other filling his chest with blood, time feelers clinging to his so tightly that he _thinks_ it should hurt. 

_“Please, don't be sad. Don't let this bring you down, because I'm not really gone. Remember? There's no getting rid of me, I'll pester you until the end of the universe and time itself. … At the time I'm recording this message, you've already taken control of some operations, and you are_ great, _Koschei. You are fantastic,_ magnificent, _and you know it. So, don't forget it, please? You're beautiful, Koschei. And no matter what happened to me, how we left things. I forgive you. I thank you. And I want you to know you can still be beautiful, even if I'm not there anymore.”_

A hologram in the TARDIS control room, smiling sadly yet proudly from a face he hadn't seen in _centuries_ but that is fresher than most recent ones. 

Harry shakes his head and it's Cardiff all around, bustling cheerfully, while Amy still hangs off of her very flustered fiancé's shoulders. 

“A-Amy, what are you—?!” 

“Master, please, let me help you…” 

_“I could help you. Please, let me help.”_

A phone call in 10 Downing Street, drums beating insistently inside his head, and, for a moment, he feels as if his plan is not as important as answering with a 'yes'. 

_“Please, let me help. You're burning up your own life force.”_

A wasteland, a chase, a challenge, the drumbeat chanting _run-run-run-run—_

Harry wipes a hand down his face this time, scowling, and Cardiff fills his senses once more, along the thundering of Rory's heart, so loud in his embarrassment that Harry doesn't need to be leaning on him like Amy is doing to hear it clearly. 

“Amy, seriously, this is not the place—” 

“Master, I'm begging you!” 

_“Open the door, please! I'm begging you, Professor. Please, listen to me. Just open the door, please.”_

The drums, the _drums,_ only the drums and the Doctor and he needs to get away, study the situation, formulate a plan, and what better way than to let the Futurekind distract his best enemy? 

_“I'm begging you. Everything's changed! It's only the two of us! We're the only ones left! Just let me in!”_

Nonsense through a steel door, half-deadlocked, and he dismisses the words almost as soon as he hears them, because the TARDIS is his, he just needs to take the power cable out and the whole of space and time will be in his grasp. 

Another police car rushes past, startling him back to the streets of Cardiff, but the drums are in his head, hammering in time with his hearts— 

“Alright, I'm stopping now.” 

“Right, _thank you._ … Why are you smiling like that?” 

“Oh, you know, you're just so adorable when you blush…” 

“Amy, _why_ are you smiling?” 

“I just wanted to say _sorry, Master.”_

_“Anyway, why don't we stop and have a nice little chat while I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me? I don't think so.”_

_“I'm asking you really properly. Just stop. Just think!”_

_“Use my name.”_

_“Master. I'm sorry.”_

_“Tough!”_

The TARDIS whooshes around him, confused as to why they are leaving without the Doctor, but that immediately changes to sputtering and sparks and _oh, no, you don't!_

_“I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.”_

_“You can't do this. You can't do it. It's not fair!”_

But the vengeful Archangel doesn't care, he knows there is no _fair,_ there's only _death,_ and Gallifrey is gone and won't ever come back, but it's alright because they're together at last, the only two left, and he understands the Master had to try because the emptiness _hurts so much—_

_“It hurts. Doctor, the noise. The noise in my head, Doctor. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. Stronger than ever before. Can't you hear it?”_

_“I'm sorry.”_

But he hadn't gone away, hadn't left him alone, had staid and had listened when, out of options and in too much pain to think about _what in blazing Skaro he was about to do,_ the Master had let the Doctor into his head because _I don't know what to do, I'm scared, please help—_

 _“Koschei. Hello. I know what you're going to say,_ this is not the message you were supposed to record. _Well, when have you known me to do things as I was told? Oh, quit laughing! Or, well, I hope I managed to make you laugh. I doubt it though. After all, if you are watching this, it means I'm dead. Missing or killed in action, I know, but_ I know you, _Koschei. And I know you wouldn't let me be 'missing', I know you would rip apart the whole of creation if necessary to find me, and that you would refuse to listen to this until you knew for a fact that I was dead. I'm sorry, Koschei. I hope you know I would never leave you voluntarily, and that I tried everything I could before it came to this. I'll miss you.”_

Cars rush past, people talk on their phones, a baby is crying across the street, pigeons coo over their heads—and the man groans at his fiancée's latest pun while she _laughs—_

“ _Enough!”_ Koschei _roars,_ whipping around to glare the two humans into stillness, flaring within the allowed limits, and the other primitives around them immediately jerk away with startled shrieks and lots of tripping. “The next one to mock my best friend is going to have their tongue shoved so far down their throat that they'll taste their—” 

Amy is shaking in Rory's arms with _fear_ in her eyes, while Rory tries to hide her as much as possible with his body while not taking his panicked gaze off of Koschei. 

Amy and Rory. 

_Amy_ and _Rory._

_What am I doing?_

Yes, they were making fun of his name—Amy was, actually, Rory just suffered it, _literally—_ but he's dealt with that kind of stuff before, and even _worse._ All in all, especially with Rory being the 'victim', this situation should have been _amusing!_ Koschei can't just snap at them because _he_ got lost in his own head— 

Short temper. Light temporal drift. Headache – though that can be from the echo of his heartsbeat, still drumming loudly in his skull, and which he's trying _really hard_ to ignore. General discomfort, as if a thousand ants were crawling all over his skin – which, once again, might be because of the jacket, but… 

Coincidences don't exist. Add those symptoms to _when_ and _where_ they are, and what lies under their feet… 

“Paradox sickness. Mild, still building, but there so much _potential_ here—Skaro ablaze, Harkness, what have you done _now?”_ he hisses, glaring towards the _wrongness_ lazily making his way across Cardiff, still comfortably far from them. “Right, sorry about that, you two. Torchwood messed the Rift up and they haven't fixed it yet,” he tells Amy and Rory, who, by now, have separated and are hovering worriedly around him, with some passerby giving them strange looks but returning to whatever they were doing before Koschei exploded. 

“Uh, no worries, I guess. Who's Harkness? And what's Torchwood?” Rory asks, trying to inconspicuously return a small kit back to the jacket pocket he'd taken it from. 

“It's alright, Raggedy Man. And _I_ am the one who is sorry. If I'd known he was your—” 

Something _surges_ a couple streets away, the very fabric of reality _twisting,_ fraying the timeline and rippling through as much of _the whole of Cardiff's timeline_ as he can feel before it settles down into something that is too full of holes and rips and tears to stay stable much longer. 

“—arry, Harry! Can you hear me? Squeeze my hand if you can hear me,” Rory is saying, and Koschei finally realizes he has closed his eyes and there's a hand on his shoulder that is _not_ his, because one of his own is pressing against his temple while the other is holding onto a warmer hand much like the one on his shoulder. 

Taking a deep breath and returning his focus to the _here and now,_ Koschei retracts his time feelers further from the environment to try to slow down the paradox sickness caused by _the mess_ that is Cardiff currently. And then, with a calmer breath, he opens his eyes. 

Amy smiles in relief, hovering over Rory's shoulder, but the man himself is still all business, moving the hand on Koschei's shoulder to his chin, so that he can tilt his head here and there as he checks his eyes. 

“Rory, I'm fine now, you won't find any issues with pupil dilation,” Koschei tells him, taking his hand out of Rory's grip and jerking his head free as he takes a step back. “Something is really wrong here. Whatever they did to the Rift has damaged the timeline badly, and there are some aftershocks that are doing _nothing_ to fix it. I don't know what Torchwood is doing, but it's clearly _not_ enough,” he explains, this time glaring in the direction of the surge a second before he starts to walk towards it. “I want to take a look at it, make sure it really is on the mend, and then we can go get dinner.” 

“Is it really going to take that long? I mean, it's just past eleven,” Rory asks Amy, but Koschei is too focused on the timeline to decipher whatever she answers. 

Captain Jack Harkness is slowly making his way towards them, but he's still far enough that they don't have to worry – plus, it's 2006, three cheers for _anonymity!_

Cardiff is stretched thin, creasing and cracking so badly around the Rift that it's almost as if the Rift itself was trying to expand. Judging by the way this last anomaly falls in the pattern of small injuries scratching at the fabric of reality and the timeline itself, that is _exactly_ what is going on here. It could simply be the aftereffects of whatever over-excited the Rift, and they'll simply die down and scar over on their own in a couple weeks… But it could also be that this is just the beginning and things will only get _worse._

The _last_ thing Koschei wants to do right now is deal with Torchwood, _especially_ with Jack Harkness, even less so with the mild paradox sickness he's managed to develop so far. 

No wonder the TARDIS had shaken as badly as she had, if she got caught in one of the ripples. They're lucky she didn't end with worse damage than strained engines and overheating. At least that means she'll be habitable soon enough, even if she won't be able to fly yet. Koschei can't wait to get back inside, away from the paradox building—or, hopefully, dying—out here in the city. 

“Let me guess. _That_ is our destination,” Amy huffs, stepping to Koschei's side to point a bit further ahead, where the police have established a cordon at the mouth of a small side street, complete with a plastic flap blocking the way in. 

Koschei doesn't even need to check to know that yes, that's where the anomaly originated, so he merely grimaces and nods before focusing on the task at hand and straightening imposingly. 

Leather jacket and neon pink shirt half a dozen sizes too big or not, the policemen still straighten when they see him stroll purposefully towards them. 

“Sir, I'm afraid you'll have to—” the blond one starts, blocking their way with his hands up placatingly, but Koschei simply whips out his psychic paper and he goes silent. 

“They're with me,” he tells the policeman with a tilt of his head towards Amy and Rory, at his back, as he puts the psychic paper back into one of the jacket's inner pockets. 

With a long-suffering look, the policeman simply pulls up the line of police tape so they can walk under and gestures them towards the plastic flaps blocking the way into the side street. 

“Bloody Hell, Gwen could've told me there were more of them,” he mutters when they walk past, too soft for human ears to catch, but Koschei decides to ignore him and simply walks into the street without a second thought. 

The side street is actually a dead end, as cliché as it may seem, and _of course_ the anomaly is as far from them as possible. Annoying as it may be to be so far away from an easy exit and the police—who he could use as meat shields, if nothing else—it still has the advantage of giving him some extra seconds to analyze the situation. 

There's a team already there, clustered around something on the ground that _stinks_ of blood and digestive juices, among other less desirable scents filling the alley. Boxes of equipment lie around, open and with different instruments peeking out or being handed to whoever asks for them, some of them recognizable but not all of them of human make. 

The team in question is, on the other hand, fully human, though there's an echo of _uneasiness_ on them that lets Koschei identify them as Torchwood. Who else would have spent as much time around Captain Jack Harkness? One-night flings wouldn't have earned as strong an imprint as these ones carry, after all. 

Fortunately, the man himself is not around, and so Koschei quickens his steps so he can deal with this mess before the former Time Agent shows up. He _really_ doesn't want to add his presence to his building headache. 

The noise from their footsteps gets the team's attention, but before they can do more than look up and widen their eyes, Koschei flashes them the psychic paper. 

“Harry Smith, UNIT's Scientific Advisor, and my assistants, Amelia Williams and Rory Pond,” he introduces them with a no-nonsense tone, though, inwardly, he's cringing at whatever made him think introducing himself as _Smith_ was a good idea. 

_Well, at least it isn't_ John _Smith. For such an inventive man, the Doctor sure was an idiot._

Whatever. A name is just another disguise, and, at the moment, parading around as a member of UNIT will get him what he wants faster than anything else, regardless of whatever surname he chooses. Torchwood might not be all that collaborative, but at least they won't be outright dismissive, like they would with anyone else. Besides, Harry _Saxon_ will attract all kinds of wrong attention in the long run, and the last thing he wants is to sabotage his own timeline. 

Though, judging by the way one of the Torchwood idiots jumps to his feet as if zapped, maybe Harry has misjudged their relationship with UNIT. 

“You're the Doctor.” 

… Or, just maybe, what he has misjudged is the level of functional braincells in human skulls. 

“Did I stutter? Pay attention, Jones,” he snaps as he pockets the psychic paper, the rest of the team clambering to their feet as he gets by their side. 

“You have a psychic paper—” Ianto Jones protests, glaring so harshly that, if looks killed, Koschei would be a smudge on the ground, and that's when he remembers that Torchwood One operatives had at least a basic level of psychic training. 

Just his luck. 

“So does Jack Harkness, but I don't see you calling him 'Doctor',” he retorts instead, crouching next to the anomaly and reaching inside his jacket to pull out his screwdriver— “Stand down, Owen. I doubt Captain Jack will be happy to know you shot the only being able to help you with this mess,” he orders without looking up, using the second of surprise at his name that stills Harper's hand when reaching for his gun, finally taking out the sonic to scan the anomaly. 

“Oh my God. That's – That's a—” 

“Rory,” Koschei calls simply when Amy's stutter turns into quick shallow breathing, and Rory doesn't need more than that to snap out of his own horror and drag Amy away a couple steps, talking her down from her shock so she doesn't hyperventilate. 

Koschei can't really blame her for that. Even _he_ is having trouble with the anomaly, despite the fact he's just scanning it with his screwdriver at the moment, but not for the same reason. 

Amy's and Rory's shock comes from the fact that the anomaly is a body, twisted and disfigured and mangled grotesquely, though not enough to not be recognizable as a _human_ body. 

Harry's trouble is _how_ a healthy human body—huh, not that healthy, apparently the guy had kidney stones—becomes a bloody mass of unfitting parts stuck together or twisted inside out. Half of a baby's face turns into the stubble-covered chin of a man in his thirties, attached to the wrinkled neck and left shoulder of a seventy-year-old with the muscled arm of a teenager going to the gym far too often, and two out of five fingers worn down to the bone after months in a coffin. The pattern continues, the body twisted over itself in agony, with parts of it completely out of temporal synch with whichever had been the man's biological age at the moment of death. Half of his lower torso and the right leg are actually _literally_ turned inside out, organs spilling on the ground after being _precisely_ cut out of the body to fit the patch of reversed biology – even the _stones_ are outside, sitting like bloodied pearls atop the fleshy mass of a kidney turned inside out. 

But none of the parts is _unfitting,_ not in the sense of someone playing Frankenstein and cutting and stitching together different body parts. No, this body, no matter how twisted, _reads as the same person._

And how can a body have parts belonging to a baby alongside those of its adult and senior selves? 

Koschei takes in a sharp breath and turns to his screwdriver, hoping the readings prove him wrong— 

They don't. 

“What have you done this time?” he snarls up at the closest Torchwood operative, Toshiko Sato, who has only managed to exchange wide-eyed and disturbed glances with her teammates in the few seconds it has taken Koschei to scan the anomaly. 

The _body_ distorted by a temporal anomaly the likes of which Koschei hasn't encountered since _the Time War._ What kind of experiment are these idiots running now that makes the Rift lash out and _erase_ parts of a being's timeline indiscriminately? Don't they see what it does? Without the whole of the timeline, the victim reverts to the last chronological point or jumps to the next most probable. Such an anomaly would immediately kill the victim, the shock of an immediate change from, say, a thirty-year-old suddenly turning into a toddler would destroy the victim's mind or cause a heart-attack. Dead before they could even realize what had happened. _Probably_ painless. But _this?_ This is a body turning against itself, parts of it reverting to a time before it's actual stamp, others rushing forward – it would have been pure _agony_ for the victim to go in such a way, and nowhere as fast as a full body conversion, what with the timeline being _ripped apart…_ The victim would have died in agony all over their timeline, all their life, in an instant. 

_That_ is not painless. _That_ is not fast. _That_ is the kind of torture, of _deadly weapon,_ Koschei would put at the top of his 'how _not_ to kill people' list, right alongside 'extermination'. 

He wouldn't wish extermination, or this, even on his worst enemies. 

… Okay, maybe he _would_ wish it upon the Daleks and Rassilon, but this is neither the time nor the place to re-examine his mental lists. 

Sato jumps back, startled, clutching some kind of tablet closer to her chest, wide-eyed in both fear and the faintest echo of an old sense of guilt. 

“We-We haven't done anything! We've been finding these bodies with increasing frequency for a week now, and we've been analyzing them to figure out who is doing it and stop them,” she answers, indignation taking over her fear, but interestingly enough, doing nothing for her increasing guilt. “Why do you think it's our fault?” 

“Oh, I don't know,” he tells her with a fake nonchalant tone, waving his screwdriver in a circle before snarling at the whole team, who flinch back in surprise, Harper still holding his gun but keeping it aimed at the ground. “Maybe because the Rift's throwing a tantrum and Torchwood is _literally_ sitting on top of it? Didn't you primitives learn _anything_ from Canary Wharf?” he hisses, directing his glare at Jones with his last words – and stiffening in shock. “Ianto Jones. What are you doing in Cardiff in 2006?” 

“It's 2008,” a well-known voice growls at his back, over Amy's and Rory's startled gasps, and Koschei whirls around as he jumps to his feet so fast that he would be surprised he hasn't stumbled if he wasn't so full of shock and denial because that— “Let go of the screwdriver and put your hands up, Master. And, while you're at it, tell me where the Doctor is and how come you're not dead,” _Captain Jack Harkness_ snarls, eyes ablaze with anger and hatred, as he stops a bit before reaching the frozen forms of Amy and Rory, keeping his Webley trained on the Master's face. 

The Master doesn't move, tightening his grip on the screwdriver and staring at Harkness with wide eyes and his breath stuck in his throat. 

It's him. It can't be him. He's some blocks away, still approaching slowly, the _wrongness_ moving closer inexorably but still away, and yet _this_ Jack Harkness _is_ Jack Harkness. The stillness in Time, how it swirls all around this human without touching him, creating a margin of uncertainty, is more than proof enough. 

But _it can't be Jack._

“How did you sneak up on me?” the Master finally asks with a chocked voice, hands shaking softly, and Jack smirks almost sharply. 

“You weren't paying attention.” 

“You can't sneak up on me,” he tells him, almost devoid of emotion, before he manages to take in a sharp breath that kickstarts his brain into a frenzy of unanswered questions and growing panic. “You _can't_ sneak up on me! I can feel you on the other side of the city, it's _imposible_ for you to sneak up on me, on a Time Lord. It's just. Not. _Possible!”_ he shouts, keeping himself still out of willpower alone, dwindling as it is, though his shaking is growing more intense and obvious. 

Jack's here and there and here and there and _that's just not possible!_ And the sneaking! The Master can feel him moving closer and closer, he can't have been around all the while because he would have felt him, it just can't be! It _can't!_

“Maybe you should have that checked out,” Jack huffs, smirk turning humorless before completely vanishing as he lifts his Webley just the tiniest bit to bring attention back to it. “Now, where's the Doctor? How are you not dead?” 

The Doctor. The Doctor is dead. The Doctor is dead because the Master came back to life and broke the time lock and Rassilon tried to kill them and the Doctor died and the Master _went_ to Jack, he _told Jack._

But this is 2008. 

“Hey, put that thing down!” Amy shouts, recovered from the shock of the body's state, glaring at Jack but not doing anything more dangerous, like trying to approach him, due to Rory's hands wrapped around hers. “I don't know who you think he is, but we're here to help! He's—” 

“ _Amelia!”_ he barks, making both her and Rory jump in surprise, but her voice has already done its job, snapping him out of his own shock. “Be quiet, don't say anything else!” he orders with a hiss before turning to Jack, who, despite observing Amy and Rory suspiciously, never once pulled his Webley away from the Master. “We're from your personal future, we can't tell you anything. You can't see the Doctor, or the TARDIS, or _anything.”_

“Like Hell I can't!” 

“You're a Rassilon-damned Time Agent, you _know_ you can't!” he snaps back, still trying to keep himself still despite the growing urge to just shoot the freak in the head and walk away while he's busy being dead. “Now get out of the way and we'll just leave, never to come back again,” he forces himself to add, lowering his voice and trying to get his shaking under control. 

“You're not going anywhere until I have some answers,” Harkness answers, and it is the wording of the sentence that tells the Master he _knows_ he won't get the full story, but he'll still hold them here until he's satisfied with as little as they can provide. 

“He _told you_ already that we can't—” 

“Not you, you're obviously too taken in by whatever lies he has told you,” Jack cuts Amy, which only makes her bristle more, red-faced in indignation and anger and straining against Rory's grip and his pleas to _don't anger the crazy guy with the gun._ “Your boy will tell me the story of how you met the Master,” he adds, effectively silencing Amy and Rory both, who exchange a startled look before turning to Jack. “You don't trust the Master. You won't lie as quickly as she would. And if you _do,_ I will know,” he tells Rory, Webley still aiming at the Master but his blue eyes landing on the nervous nurse. 

“Jack, what's going on?” Gwen Cooper asks worriedly, hovering indecisively in the semi-circle she has formed at the Master's back with her colleagues, though, unlike Ianto Jones and Owen Harper, she doesn't have her gun trained on his back. “Who is this – Harold Saxon lookalike?” 

Right. 2008. No wonder they had looked so startled when they'd seen him coming, more than just some strange people getting past the cordon would warrant. 

“He _is_ Harold Saxon,” Jack answers with a scowl, and the Master would have glared back if not because a stronger shudder overtakes him as the _wrongness_ that feels like Jack gets closer. “He's an alien, a Time Lord, and he almost took over the human race and destroyed Earth. And he _died._ So, whoever you are, how did you meet him and where's the Doctor?” he adds, directing the last question to Rory, who snaps his mouth closed almost immediately as the realization on his face turns to discomfort. 

“Right. I'm Rory. Hi,” he tells them, waving awkwardly, before turning back to Jack when Amy hisses at him to _focus._ “Look, I'm really not the best to tell this story, I wasn't there at the beginning. You see, Harry—that is, the Master?—he landed on Amy's garden—this is her, Amy, by the way—fourteen years ago. Well, fourteen years ago _for us,_ but if this is 2008, then it was just twelve years for you,” he babbles, nervously looking between Jack and everyone else – and tensing when his eyes meet the Master's. “Hey, are you alright? You don't look—” 

“There's an anomaly at the other side of the city that's been getting closer ever since we first stepped into this bloody place, which feels _exactly_ like you, Harkness. So, excuse me for the headache,” he hisses with a sharp humorless smirk, unwilling to reveal just how _bad_ it's getting. 

Oh, he has a headache, that much is true, but the tension mounting in his body is starting to make his muscles ache, his stomach is clenching and roiling uneasily, and his time feelers feel so charged with artron static that he doesn't even _dare_ curl them anymore to avoid the uncomfortable zaps that would result from its discharge. At least now that he's aware of the paradox sickness he can make an effort to focus on the present, avoiding any temporal drift. Still, the sooner they are out of here, the better. 

“Tosh?” Jack calls, frowning in unease rather than suspicion, and Koschei can hear the faintest tapping behind him as Sato checks her tablet. 

“There was a brief spike of Rift activity about twenty minutes ago at the docks. According to the readings, it's most likely just a Weevil,” she answers after a moment—a _moment,_ not a specific amount of time, and how long has this been going on—and Jack nods and gives Koschei a mocking smirk. 

“The big bad Time Lord, scared of a little Weevil. I'm almost tempted to let it rip your throat out.” 

“You sure you don't want to do the honors?” Koschei shoots back with a large humorless grin, and the glint in Jack's eyes tells him more than clearly that he certainly wouldn't mind. 

“ _Anyway,_ twelve years ago, the TARDIS landed in Amy's house and Harry closed some kind of crack in Amy's bedroom wall that led to an alien prison,” Rory quickly intercedes, lifting his hands for a moment as if preparing to step between Jack and the Master the moment they jump at the other's throat. “Then something went wrong with the TARDIS and he had to leave. But the thing is that Prisoner Zero had escaped to Earth and – well, this is 2008, right? So, has the Atraxi thing happened already?” 

“The disco snowflakes with giant eyeballs threatening to burn down the planet? No, can't say it's familiar,” Harper snarks, earning a deadpan look from Rory and a glare from Amy, while Jack stays immutable. 

“Prisoner Zero will vacate the human residence or the human residence will be incinerated,” Sato quotes, and the sound that follows her words make it clear she's shuffling nervously. “And then someone hacked the Archangel Network and set all clocks in the world to 0:00 hours.” 

“I wonder who that was,” Harkness hisses, not even bothering to add any kind of sarcasm to flavor the accusation, and the sharp mocking grin Harry tries to answer with turns into a grimace before it can form, another jab of pain and growing discomfort washing over him as the Weevil approaches. 

“That was the Doctor, actually,” Rory tells them, no longer nervous, and despite all eyes turning to him, he just shrugs his shoulders almost dismissively. “Harry hunted down and captured Prisoner Zero, and the Doctor sent a message to the Atraxi to let them know where it was. And then, when the Atraxi tried to just leave like nothing happened, he called them back and… Well, he told them that everyone was important and that if the Atraxi thought to threaten Earth again, he would deal with them like he had any other would be alien invaders.” 

“And the Atraxi ran away so fast that they should have been charged for speeding,” Jack finishes with a knowing grin, eyes shining with fondness. 

“Right. The Doctor left after that, but came back after two years to take Amy traveling as an apology for taking so long to fix the Prisoner Zero thing. And then they picked me up for a wedding present trip. We were going back to our time when the TARDIS was hit with some sort of… temporal turbulence, or something. Humans can't be in the TARDIS right now, so Harry took us out to get some lunch until she's fixed,” Rory adds calmly, and, by his side, Amy grins proudly and glares at Jack, daring him to argue her fiancé's story. 

Koschei stares at them with a mixture of feelings so bizarre that he can't make sense of it, but he's sure there's dread and admiration somewhere in there. 

On the one hand, they still believe him to be the Doctor. On the other, Rory just managed to bullshit his way past Harkness' evaluation without telling a single lie. Of course, the second is a direct result of the first, but Koschei has to give both him and Amy points for keeping their composure when faced with the sudden revelation that there had been two Time Lords once upon a time, and that Harold Saxon was one of them. 

… Wait, hadn't he told them about that? Or something similar? He's pretty sure they've talked about the Master someti— 

The next shudder is strong enough to make Koschei gasp, time feelers curling into themselves and making him stumble as the static rushes all over him, the sensation more uncomfortable and disturbing than painful, though the spike of pain caused by the approaching _wrongness_ messing the timeline around Jack's distortion is enough to make him grab his head tightly as he curls into himself. 

“Raggedy Man—!” 

“What the—” 

“Will you _please_ deal with this Weevil?!” he shouts at the Torchwood _idiots_ behind him, not even bothering to hold back a couple of foul curses that are not translated but still have Jack's eyebrows jump to his hairline. “The Rassilon-damned thing is practically on top of our heads!” 

“What? There's a Weevil on the rooftops?” Harper asks, shifting so his gun is trained on the sky, while Sato taps on her tablet. 

“It makes no sense. For it to have moved so quickly it has to have traveled through the sewers. It would have never gone so far without attracting attention otherwise,” she explains, and, this time, it's Jones and Cooper who shift, weapons in hand, as they analyze the alley in search for manholes. 

Harkness gives the Master a searching look, lowering his Webley unconsciously as the Master pushes the pain away and tries to center himself once more, cursing the fact they parked so far away— 

The Vortex manipulator strapped to Jack's wrist _shrieks,_ flashing madly, so suddenly that Jack almost drops his gun before he pulls it up and fiddles with the manipulator, trying to figure out what's wrong with it— 

Koschei doesn't need a Vortex manipulator, or a tablet connected to whatever equipment Torchwood has rigged to monitor the Rift. He doesn't need any of that, and yet he was still _wrong._

He knows, as soon as the manipulator goes off, as soon as the _wrongness_ finally enters the alley, Time swirling and ripping and mending all around them far more violently than Charybdis' whirlpool could have ever been, buffeting and bruising and soothing over and over yet also all at once. 

Koschei jerks around, face bloodless in his terror, hands shaking so badly and clenching around his _useless_ screwdriver to the point his fingers bruise, and he would have fallen to his knees if not because he's frozen in horror. 

He'd had the pieces all along, from the moment they stepped out of the TARDIS—from the moment the TARDIS had been _attacked—_ and yet he hadn't put them together. 

The potential paradox, the state of Cardiff's timeline, the Rift expanding, the _body._ He had had all the clues, he had _seen_ something like this before, and yet he hadn't _realized._

The Neverwere hangs over their heads, not floating or flying or hovering, simply _being_ right there, in the middle of empty air. The alley's timeline distorts around it, with memories and impressions and possibilities graying and flickering like static taking over them wherever they touch it. It spreads through the dimensions almost lazily, neither flaring nor displaying, yet not curling into itself to hide either, just being there, waiting. _Observing._

Koschei's not sure what, if anything, the humans can perceive, his own sight graying as all his attention centers on the Neverwere, and he finally realizes how _stupid,_ how _blind_ he had been. 

Jack's a Fact. He's a Fixed Point in time that exists through all of time at once, unmovable, unchangeable, with time moving around it but never _with_ or _alongside_ or _through_ him. The distortion caused by a Fixed Point is that of a whirlpool, with the Fixed Point in the middle and everything else changing around it, or, at least, that's the excessively simplified and consequently erroneous definition of Fixed Points. But the fact still stands that, while everything changes, whatever's in the Fixed Point doesn't. 

Neverwere create such a disturbance too, only they are the _negative_ version of a Fixed Point, with their being something that could _never be._ And if they can't _be,_ anything they interact with can't exist either, because _nothing_ can interact with something that doesn't exist. Time warps around the Neverwere, but unlike the Fixed Points, they are not a rock around which water moves, but an emptiness to be avoided at all costs. 

Koschei should've been able to tell the difference between a Fact and a Neverwere, especially since he has met Jack and dealt with Neverweres before. 

But he didn't. For whatever reason, _he didn't._ Though, if the state Cardiff's timeline is in is anything to go by, he has his suspicions as to why. 

He quickly pushes that thought away and focuses on this one second, the second the Neverwere finally reveals itself, and time _stops._ It's not stopped, of course not, there's no way to lock time without some tools, and while the screwdriver could be used for some seconds, this is not what is going on now. 

No, what Koschei has just done is _shift_ most of his self to the fourth dimension, not enough to mess up his tridimensional shell but hopefully, enough to deal with a lone Neverwere. 

… It's strong, well fed, and Koschei is just one Time Lord, but he has to do _something_ or the Neverwere will erase them all. 

So, he shifts, and, once focused in the fourth dimension, he _flares,_ and the Gallifreyan flows out of him without hesitation nor weakness— 

But he _has_ a weakness. He's alone, no one to support him, to help him weave time into _being_ so that the Neverwere can be vanquished. 

And Koschei doesn't know who he is. 

Harry, Harold, the Professor, Ulysses – even _the Master._ All of them are fake names, lacking power, lacking self, and while he has favored 'Koschei' ever since the Doctor's death, that's not him either. Koschei was the ambitious and hard-working Time Tot and Academy student who would travel the stars and go on adventures with Theta, but this 'Koschei' isn't that person anymore. 

A lack of conviction is a lack of strength. Koschei is nameless, _non-existing._

The Gallifreyan and Time Lord formerly known as the Master _Is Not._

He hasn't even started weaving time but he's also far enough into it to realize it's useless, when the Neverwere _finally_ reacts. 

And Koschei dies. 

* * *

It may be hypocritical of him to say this, but when Jack sees someone die, he expects them to _stay dead._

Then again, this is the one Time Lord who managed to survive the Time War, other than the Doctor, so he's not really that surprised. What he is, however, is _pissed._

After everything the Master did during the Year that Never Was, up to and including dying in the Doctor's arms to spite him, _this_ takes the cake. He's back, with the same damned face, and apparently traveling around with the Doctor and his new companions. The fact that they seem to like him, though the man is still wary of him if the occasional looks he gives him are any indication, only makes it worse. 

The worst part of it all is the whole 'we're from your personal future'. _Personal._ As in, Jack will have a part in the whole Doctor and Master traveling together, someday, and he's not sure if he can take it. 

Of course, part of it depends on the Doctor himself. If he's not allowed to see him, it's probably because he has regenerated again, and while part of him is sad to hear that, thinking about what might have happened and how much he'd liked that spiky hair, among other things, the other part is actually excited to see what the Doctor might look like now. 

It's no use speculating about the future, especially not when Time Lords are involved, but damn if Jack can't help but run through different scenarios as he listens to Rory's story, each more bizarre than the last. 

… Well, at least the Master is earning his keep, helping the Doctor deal with the Atraxi and watching after the humans while he repairs the TARDIS. 

It also makes sense to send the Master out if they thought it was 2006, as no one would recognize him and the Doctor would still stay away from Jack to avoid messing with the timelines. It doesn't mean he's not annoyed at the fact he'll have to just let the Doctor leave without even a hello, though. 

Jack saw the Doctor not that long ago, he got the answers he needed, if not the ones he wanted, so it's not as urgent as it would have been had it actually been 2006… but this is _the Doctor._ Jack will never have enough of him, no matter how much time they spend together or how often they meet. 

… No matter that the Doctor will never look at him the way Jack looks at the Doctor. 

But now, the current issue is not the Doctor and how much Jack misses him, but getting the Master out of Cardiff so Torchwood can deal with the disturbing bodies left behind by temporal anomalies. 

Jack was pretty sure they were aftershocks from the Rift activity Tommy closed back in 1918, with someone being unlucky enough to get caught in it… But that was before they found the second body. After the third, they started to search for something that might have slipped through, while smoothing over the last tremors of the Rift as it closed. 

Now, though… If the Master's pinched face is any indicator, Jack _might_ need the Doctor's help with this one. 

The Master stumbles with a pained gasp, curling into himself and grabbing his head, and everyone startles 

“Raggedy Man—!” 

“What the—” 

“Will you _please_ deal with this Weevil?!” the Master shouts at Jack's team without turning around, before releasing a couple of foul curses that are not translated but still have Jack's eyebrows jump to his hairline. “The Rassilon-damned thing is practically on top of our heads!” 

And that's when Jack knows. Even as his team looks around, trying to make sense of that statement, and even before the Vortex manipulator goes crazy at the sudden readings of a temporal anomaly, Jack knows it isn't a Weevil. 

The moment he checks the manipulator and sees that what has just appeared is a temporal void… That's when he knows the Rift's activity was the cause of the 'mystery murders'. 

When the Master whirls around, shaking in fear and pale as death, to stare at where the manipulator tells Jack is the center of the void, and he follows his line of sight to see clotheslines vanish and walls erode right in front of his eyes, with the air darkening and shimmering like a heat mirage, Jack knows they'll be lucky to survive. 

And then the Master tenses, strong and imposing and as capable of _anything_ as the Doctor had been aboard the Game Station, telling the Daleks he was going to rescue Rose and destroy them all, and Jack _hopes._

Master or not, this is a Time Lord. And if all those horror stories and legends that circulated around the Time Agency have the slightest grain of truth in them— 

The Master stiffens, limbs contorting unnaturally and spine twisting as if crushed in an invisible grip, head thrown back with his mouth wide open into the most agonized and inhuman scream Jack's ever heard, wisps of darkness thickening around his body like smoke even as he flickers into static, blond-Saxon into brown-suit-brown-hair and into buzzcut-big-ears and to colorful-coat and to white-hair-red-vest and to black-suit-goatee and to _burnt-corpse—_

Golden dust bursts from the shrieking ghoul and Jack's eyes widen impossibly more before he throws himself at the Doctor's companions and tries to make eye-contact with his team past the golden mist— 

“ _Get down!”_

The two civilians under him squeak and protest as he practically throws them to the ground before dropping atop them, but they still when the air over them _explodes,_ a wave of gold blinding him even through his tightly-closed eyelids, and the rush of energy and rock shattering and glass rattling replaces the inhuman shrieking. 

… If this is what regeneration is like, Jack better make sure to run away if the Doctor ever regenerates in front of him, immortality or not. The way the Vortex manipulator is shrieking and warbling, he _really_ doesn't want to know how that energy reacts with anything organic. 

It doesn't even occur to him that Jack's actually _hoping_ this is what regeneration is like. This is the Master, who should be dead, and Jack definitely doesn't want him alive or anywhere near Cardiff. But when faced with the choice between the Master and a temporal void, Jack doesn't hesitate in choosing the Master as the lesser evil. 

He can escape and he won't be killed permanently with one, but he really doesn't know how he would be able to live through being erased from history. 

Damn it all, temporal voids are supposed to be _theories!_ Sure, it seems some events all over history can only be explained by temporal voids, but the Time Agency had _never_ dealt with any of them! If someone had, it was before the Time Agency had been established, which means – it means _Time Lords_ had dealt with temporal voids. 

And the only Time Lord currently available is regenerating due to the very temporal void he was trying to fix. 

Or, as Jack realizes when the surge ends and he finally lifts his head to observe their surroundings, the only Time Lord available was _not_ regenerating, but fixing the temporal void… in a sense. 

The clotheslines are still gone and some walls are still eroded as if by decades of acid rain, but the _rest_ of the walls… 

Jack recognizes the red brick so stained with soot that it looks almost black as marks of the Industrial Revolution, and the cracks and fallen bricks characteristic of Blitz-damaged building under the half of a 1940s patriotic poster, and even the overtly-patterned iridescence of twenty-third century architecture, amongst the patchwork of different eras the walls have been turned into. The lower part of the walls is untouched, though, and Jack realizes it's only where the golden energy struck that time has gone out of synch. 

There and under the Master's kneeling form, which is now cracked concrete with some weeds poking out here and there. 

Jack can see his team slowly pushing up onto their elbows or sitting up from where they are sprawled on the ground, past the Master's body, shaking in fright or shock as they stare uncomprehendingly at the walls and the Time Lord, none of them sporting anything worse than some scrapes from when they dropped to the ground. 

Relief fills Jack so strongly that he loses his breath, but fortunately, his reflexes kick in before he can dissolve into a boneless mass of giggling and nonsensical babbling, quickly turning off the Vortex manipulator's scan to silence its warbling as he gets off the two civilians and cautiously approaches the unmoving Time Lord. 

The Master is kneeling in the middle of cracked concrete, back hunched and head bowed, with his arms hanging lifelessly, one hand in his lap and the other on the ground. Both of them have the fingertips wet with an orange-red liquid, but when Jack sees the right one covered in it, that's when he realizes it's blood. 

He had never seen the Doctor bleed before, despite all the trouble they got into, not even a nosebleed. Seeing it now, and knowing how sturdy Time Lords are, makes his stomach roil. 

More blood stains his blond hair in some spots, most noticeably the temples, and slips from his ears down the sides of his face. Looking at it, Jack finally sees that, despite his stillness, the Master's lips are moving, a trickle of orange-red blood falling down his chin, and Jack finally realizes there's a soft murmur in the air, rhythmic in a way that's too familiar and more than a bit disturbing— 

And he finally makes out the words. 

_Ga-lli-frey-falls. Ga-lli-frey-falls. Ga-lli-frey-falls._

_Gallifrey falls._

But why – What happened? Is the Master actually badly injured? There's the right hand, covered in blood, but the spots on his head are quite small – though he was screaming and twisting in pain before the energy wave, just how much damage did that do and how is Jack supposed to deal with it, how can he face the Doctor after this— 

“ _Raggedy Man!”_ the civilian woman—Amy?—shouts, horrified, as she rushes past Jack's frozen form to drop to her knees by the Master's side, hands hovering by his face as if she's afraid touching him will hurt him. “Raggedy Man?” 

The Master doesn't react, still whispering the same two words in that eerie four-time beat, even as Rory moves to Amy's side and they exchange a worried and lost look. 

When he kneels down to try to catch a glimpse of the Master's face, Jack sees dark bags under completely unfocused wide-open golden eyes, and some scratches on his temples that bleed thin lines of orange-red and which look suspiciously like nail scratches. _Deep_ nail scratches. And dried tear tracks. 

Finally, Amy gathers enough courage to grab the Master's shoulders, but he doesn't react. 

“Raggedy Man. _Harry._ Gallifrey is gone,” she whispers, tears filling her eyes while Rory fiddles with a small kit he pulled out of his pocket, analyzing the Time Lord with the same intensity Owen and Martha would, but with far less confidence. 

He may have medical training, but he hasn't been around Time Lords long enough to know how to use it on them. Jack can sympathize, it's always hard to deal with an unknown alien race for the first time, though at least he had the advantage of knowing more than just human biology. And no, not only in _that_ way. Time Agency first aid training covered the most wide-spread friendly species of the galaxy, after all. 

“How can Gallifrey be gone?” 

Amy and Rory startle, and Jack realizes the unnerving mantra has gone silent, which means that rough and cracked voice was the Master's. He's still unresponsive, eyes unfocused, but he's no longer chanting that eerie 'Gallifrey falls'. 

Only, if Jack's ears are to be believed, he's either really confused or amnesiac. 

Amy hesitates, but her hands squeeze his shoulders reassuringly before she answers. 

“There was… There was a war—” 

“And the Time Lords?” the Master asks almost before Amy's done, talking over her last words, and Jack frowns softly. 

If he's really as catatonic as he looks, that can't be telepathy, right? Maybe it's something to do with time instead… Or maybe he's lost in his own head, reliving an old conversation – or a future one. He's a Time Lord, it wouldn't be the strangest thing. 

“They're gone,” Amy answers nonetheless, sad and worried, as she leans closer to him, with Rory holding onto _her_ shoulders to anchor her. “Don't you remember? You told me, back in— Don't you remember the Daleks?” 

“We're the only two left. There's no one else,” the Master whimpers, finally reacting as tears fill his eyes and drop to his lap, with his shoulders shaking visibly— “ _Regenerate!”_ he shouts, grief and denial filling his broken voice as his face twists into the deepest _loss_ Jack's ever seen— 

And he remembers standing on the flight deck of the _Valiant,_ a small part of him full of vicious satisfaction, while the bigger echoes the pain in the Doctor's voice and forces him to look at the ceiling, away from the last of the Time Lords cradling the body of his best friend in his arms. 

“Hey, Raggedy Man, hey! Shush, it's alright, it's—it's not alright, but you'll get better, do you hear me?” Amy soothes as best as she can, though there are tears down her cheeks, as she tries to give the Master a smile. “We'll have you fixed up in no time, and everything will be alright—” 

“Rose saved me,” the Master whispers, silencing Amy and making Jack's breath hitch. “She… She was there for me after… after I lost _everything._ And now she's gone, but… But at least she can be happy now.” 

Rose. How _the Hell_ does _the Master_ know _Rose?!_ He can't know Rose! Rose was lost at Canary Wharf, and the Master didn't return until— 

Wait. Eighteen months before the day after the election. That would be around the time of the Battle of Canary Wharf… But Rose was away before that, traveling with the Doctor. It doesn't make sense! 

“Ah, no, I'm not— It's me, Amy. Amelia?” she answers, taking a hand off him to wipe the tears on her face— 

“ _Amelia!”_ the Master calls, horrified, loud enough to make the girl jump away from him and into Rory, but he immediately follows that with a terrifying snarl and wordless shout, shoulders heaving with his heavy breaths – and his face falls, anger replaced by _fear._ “Let me see, let me – Hey, hey, hush now, I'm here, we'll fix this, just—” he babbles with as calming a smile as someone who is scared out of his wits can manage, before he cuts himself and the smile goes cold and slips off his face. 

“Raggedy Man?” Amy calls, softly at first but louder when she reaches for him again, shaking him softly. “Raggedy Man, can you hear me? I'm here, Harry, I'm _fine._ Please, say _something,”_ she begs before turning to Rory. “You have to do something.” 

“I don't know anything about Time Lords,” he answers with a grimace, but shuffles past her to tilt the Master's head up and look into his eyes. “It's like he's not even here, his eyes don't focus, he doesn't react to touch…” he announces as he moves a hand to the Master's neck – and he blinks in surprise before frowning in worry. “His heartbeat's _wild,_ it's like he's fibrillating.” 

“He has two hearts,” Jack and Amy tell him in unison, exchanging a startled look, with Rory looking between the two of them for a moment before turning to Jack. 

“You've traveled with the Doctor, what else can you tell me? I've only been around a couple of days, you _have_ to know more about Time Lords than we do,” he asks, gesturing between himself and Amy, and Jack frowns as he looks at the Master. 

He's the Master, the same psycho who turned the TARDIS into a paradox machine and conquered Earth, who kept Jack in chains for a whole bloody year— 

But he's also the Doctor's friend, the only other Time Lord left. And he _did_ save them from the temporal void, even if it was collateral to saving himself. 

So, Jack lets out a huff and moves next to Amy and Rory, who shift so he can kneel in front of the Master, though they hover by his side, worried, while the rest of Torchwood get to their feet and observe them in confusion, nervousness and worry. He's pretty sure Owen is itching to _help,_ if the frown on his face is any indication, but just like with Rory, Jack is the only one out of all of them with a reasonable amount of experience when it comes to Time Lords, and so Owen shuffles impatiently and scowls. Gwen and Tosh look worried, while Ianto is carefully analyzing everyone, suspicious and unwilling to trust anyone associated with the Doctor. 

“Well, I know that it doesn't matter which species you're from, ear bleeding is _bad,”_ Jack says aloud as he presses two fingers to the Master's neck to feel his hearts beat frantically and out of rhythm— 

The Master's breath hitches and his eyes _focus_ on Jack, freezing him in the spot. 

“Captain. Have you had work done?” 

_“You can talk!”_

_“Oh yes, the face! Regeneration.”_

Jack jerks back before he can think about it, shaking the hand that he'd pressed against the Master's neck almost as if it'd been something gross, and the Time Lord's eyes go vacant again before he tenses with a pained grimace. 

“Omega's Holy Hands, they couldn't have fried my kidneys instead, could they? They had to get the heart,” he hisses, and, finally unable to stand on the side anymore, Owen grabs his kit and kneels next to Jack. 

“Well, I may not know about Time Lord biology, but I know how to restart a heart,” he comments almost conversationally, grabbing a stethoscope and putting it on. “Where are they?” 

“ _One_ of my hearts. Quit panicking, I have two of them,” the Master scoffs, but after a quick look to see he's still oblivious to whatever is going on outside of his head, Jack turns to Owen. 

“Middle of the chest. The left one is about the same place as a human's, the right one is lower and further into the right side,” he explains, shifting aside to make way for Owen as he pulls that familiar-looking leather jacket open— 

_“Rose. Rose! Look! Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”_

_“Blimey! The three of us could fit in that thing!”_

_“… Okay, now I_ have _to get it.”_

“That's what he said when the Daleks shot him,” Amy whispers at Jack's back, but while he makes a note to ask her about what she's talking about, Jack's too taken by the sight of _that shirt_ to focus on it. 

“Where did you get that? Where did you get that shirt?!” Jack asks, softly at first but louder after, going as far as to grab the jacket's lapels and push Owen aside, though he refrains from shaking the Master in case what little brains he still has intact get too scrambled to answer. 

The Master's eyes focus on Jack again – and he grins. A large and toothy grin full of glee and a hint of mischief that makes his blue eyes light up, accompanied by a bark of laughter that sounds like _nothing_ he'd heard from either Saxon or the Master— 

“Fantastic! I know _exactly_ what to do with this one!” he crows happily, and Jack lets go of him as if slapped, feeling cold after all his blood drops to his feet. 

“What did you say?” he asks in a whisper, unsure even if he's been heard, as the Master loses focus once more and his _unfitting_ grin turns into something more _nostalgic._

“It was a present. Rose and Jack got it as a joke,” he answers softly, and Jack jerks to his feet and starts to pace, running a hand through his hair before he falls to his knees again in front of the _thrice-damned Time Lord_ with a deep scowl. 

“ _Stop doing that!”_ he shouts, pointing at the Master threateningly, but he's back to his catatonic state and doesn't even blink. 

“Jack, _Jack!_ What are you doing?!” Owen asks him, startled yet with the slightest hint of worry under the confusion, as he pushes his accusing hand down. “Look, I know that face is disturbing, but you were the first to try to help him. Let's focus on that now, and deal with your issues when there isn't a life at stake. Okay?” 

Jack feels a flash of pride under the annoyance, listening to Owen's words, but finally, sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Right. You're _right,_ let's focus on the bloody alien first—” 

“Nurse Boy, whatever your name is. Close your eyes, close Amy's eyes, and don't look, no matter what you hear. Don't even _turn_ until I touch you, and don't let Amy face this either, eyes closed or not. Do you understand?” the Master interrupts, deadly serious and intense despite the complete lack of focus in his eyes, and both Jack and Owen startle and exchange a confused frown. 

“The Hell is he talking about now?” 

“No,” Rory whispers, more of an exhale than a word, but Jack turns anyway to see him tense and pale. “No, wait, don't do that!” 

“Five seconds.” 

“Stop, stop!” Rory shouts as he _lurches_ towards the Master, practically crashing onto Jack and Owen so he can grab the Time Lord's shoulder, and Jack grimaces at the way the Master's knee digs into his hip as he ends up supporting most of Rory's weight. “Rule 6! _Rule 6!”_

The Master stiffens, and, when nothing else happens, Rory finally relaxes and drops to his knees, getting off the frozen Torchwood operatives. 

“What was _that?”_ Owen asks, bewildered, as he looks from the relieved civilian to the catatonic Time Lord and finally to Jack, who can only shrug in answer. 

“Rory, you know what Rule 6 is for!” Amy hisses, worried but also startled, and the man grimaces with a shudder. 

“The last time I heard that was just before he captured Prisoner Zero,” he tells her, and, with a soft 'oh', she slumps to her knees with eyes wide and face white. “Yeah, that's what I thought.” 

“How do you know about those?” the Master whispers, attracting their attention, and, this time, Jack frowns as he considers what's been going on. 

The Master is practically catatonic, talking nonsense and rarely focusing on the present – but apparently, some of that nonsense is from _past experiences._ Which means that maybe the whole 'focusing on the present' is more literal with him than the expression it's supposed to be. 

“I told him. After that thing with River, I thought… I thought it would be better if Rory knew about that Rule too,” Amy answers, partly ashamed but mostly worried, and Jack turns to the Master, attentive, to see what he'll answer to that, if anything. 

If the damage from the temporal void was so big that he's locked inside his head, he'll probably fall silent. But as far as they've seen, he seems to react to them, to outside stimuli, so maybe he isn't that badly hurt _or_ he's not hurt in that way. Maybe, with his nature as a Time Lord… 

“Shut up. I said _shut up,”_ he hisses angrily, and Amy startles and frowns, hurt and defeated— “You wanted to follow the ship? We followed the ship,” he adds, not dropping the expression, and recognition fills Amy's eyes. 

“Remind him of something else,” Jack tells her, reaching for her hand despite the fact he's too far away to grab it. “Do it! We need to get him to focus on us!” 

“Now get out,” the Master adds, continuing his tirade as Amy hesitates. “I'm not—” 

“You like River now!” Amy exclaims, cutting the Master, and he _stills_ in answer. “You like River now. You're not a grumpy old alien anymore,” she adds, softer, with a hopeful smile growing on her face, and, as one, they all turn to look at the Master, expectantly. 

Not a second later, the Master snarls, eyes _still_ unfocused, and Jack feels his stomach fall. 

“Oi! Shut up!” the Master barks, and Jack can't help his disappointed sigh, because _that_ doesn't sound like the answer to the cue provided. “She just helped save this colony, and possibly the whole of the universe. Either you give her a minute to say goodbye, or I _will_ go back to the past to make sure your parents never met. That's the only warning you're going to get,” he threatens with a dark frown, but Jack can only stare at him in growing disbelief. 

When he turns to Amy, it's to see her smile broadly and give him a nod, confirming that, yes, that _was_ the right answer to Amy's comment about this River person, as well as the surreal fact that the Master actually _likes_ someone enough to threaten people. 

Owen looks as confused as Rory, but Gwen and Tosh exchange a hesitant smile while Ianto blinks with that blank face of his that he puts on when he's trying really hard to hide his feelings. Judging by the slight crease of his eyebrows, he's most likely disturbed, probably by the comment about going back on someone's timeline to ensure they are never born. 

“Wrong person there, Honey,” the Master adds into the silence, smirking, and Amy lets out a bark of laughter before she can stop herself, which makes Rory's confused expression turn to a tired one. 

“I don't want to know,” he deadpans, and Jack can't help his snort, especially at Ianto's eyeroll, though Owen's curiosity and the way Gwen looks at the Master as if he's adorable quickly turn his amusement into a grimace. 

“But I thought you liked me as your knight in shining armor,” the Master pouts, apparently still rolling with whatever memory Amy triggered, and, this time, Amy is not the only one to chuckle. 

Jack sighs and gets to his feet, having seen enough to know the Master is _not_ trapped in his own head. He still has no idea how to fix him and learn what the Hell he did to fix a temporal void, though, so he directs his team to start packing with a couple gestures. This memory seems to be safe, so Jack would rather keep the Master stuck in it for as long as possible, and that means silence. Fortunately, his team doesn't need words to get his command, and so Ianto, Tosh and Gwen start to put their instruments back while Owen turns his attention to bandaging the Master's right hand and Jack analyzes the walls. 

Looks like he'll have to get Andy to cordon this place fully. There's no way this amalgam of eras can be explained, no matter the excuse. 

“Ugh, please, tell me you didn't!” the Master exclaims, grimacing in disgust but with eyes still unfocused and not moving an inch, so Jack only spares him a look before deciding to help his team— “Not Jack Harkness!” 

“Excuse me? What's wrong with Jack Harkness?” Jack retorts before he can think about it, turning to glare at the kneeling Master, ignoring the way his team barely contain their laughter at his offense, while Amy blushes and Rory doesn't even bother looking confused anymore, rubbing his face. “Have you seen this body?” he adds, this time consciously, to make his team roll their eyes—Gwen and Tosh, though Tosh also blushes—or comment about his ego—Owen—or ogle him discreetly with a grin—Ianto. 

“Great. Now there's two of them,” Rory groans, burying his face in his hands, and Amy's bright grin fades a bit as she rolls her eyes and bumps her shoulder into her companion's. 

“Rory! Seriously? Kissing is all in good fun, but anything else? That's just disgusting. Besides, humans don't have the necessary bits for that,” the Master comments with a large grin that somehow manages to look like a grimace at the same time, and all activity in the alley ceases as Rory jerks his head up and everyone turns to stare at him in surprise. 

“It was him! He was messing with me!” he shrieks, so red that he's practically glowing, and Amy's surprise turns to annoyance as she glares at the Master. 

“Do you seriously want me to explain about _Gallifreyan sex?”_

“ _No!”_ Amy and Rory shout in unison, red-faced and horrified, as if the Master was actually capable of— 

Right, what is some mental scarring when compared to conquering a whole planet? 

“Alright you, stop terrifying the children before their mommies send _us_ their psychiatrist's bills,” Jack chuckles, taking pity on the innocent minds of the two civilians. 

Though, come to think of it, he's probably doing his team a favor too. That comment about humans not having the _necessary bits for that_ doesn't bode well for any humans in the next millennium, approximately. 

“Can you sense it?” the Master asks, voice soft and shoulders tense, and Jack's grin falls as he realizes he triggered another potentially damaging memory. 

However, when he turns to Amy, he sees she's as confused as he is. 

“Sense what?” Gwen asks, done with the instruments, while Owen and Tosh finish bagging the body. 

“Coming out of the walls. Can you feel it?” the Master answers, and Jack can feel the hair on the back of his neck stand on edge as the dejà vú washes over him. 

“Stop that,” he growls, and Gwen's curiosity turns to wariness as they all look at Jack as if he's a stranger. 

And how come it is _his_ fault that the Master is being so creepy? _He_ is the alien psychopath! 

He's about to say as much, but when he looks down at the Master to point it out, he's frozen by the sight of that large ear-to-ear grin that doesn't belong in Saxon's face, though this time with no humor in it. 

“Funny little human brains. How do you get around in those things?” 

Jack sees _red._

“I said stop it! _Stop it!”_ he hears himself shout, livid, hands tightly clenching the jacket's lapels even as he shakes the boneless alien hanging from his grip, having pulled the Master up into his face from his kneeling position sometime before his brain tuned back in. “Stop quoting him!” he adds, conscious enough this time to recognize the voices telling him to be careful and put the Master down, as well as Rory and Owen hovering at the edge of his vision. 

He only has eyes for the Master, though, what with the red haze of rage that has engulfed him, but the fact that the Time Lord gasps and actually _meets_ Jack's eyes, _focused,_ also helps catch his attention. 

“… Captain? Jack?” the Master whispers, and somewhere at the back of his brain, Jack realizes that he never focuses for anyone other than Jack, that while he answers to the cues the others give him, the Master has always stayed detached, even when others touched him, _except for Jack._

“Master,” Jack hisses back, pondering that thought more seriously as he forces his anger down. 

Amy and Rory are time travelers, but Jack is a fixed point, immortal. He is wrong for Time Lords, so maybe it is that wrongness which helps the Master focus? If so, what kind of damage did the temporal void do? 

“Is that really you?” the Master asks in a small voice, emotionless but for the tiniest spec of timid hope under the tiredness. 

“Who else would I be? Unlike _someone,_ I don't change my face,” he scoffs, not as belligerently as before, as he considers the fact that all of this 'nonsensical babbling' can be tied to a Time Lord-exclusive kind of injury, or maybe even to damage to the timeline. 

After all, this is a _temporal void_ they're talking about. There are no past records to consult, no list of functional strategies to implement when dealing with one. 

They need the Doctor. Maybe quoting him, using sentences _Jack_ knows, is the Master's way of telling Jack that in his injured state. 

“Do you _really_ think I would _choose_ a face this recognizable?” the Master scoffs, though he tenses and grimaces as soon as the words get out, and one of his hands twitches as if he would have rubbed his face if he could. “No, that's the past, that's—I can't. I can't focus, I—Stay. Please, _please,_ stay. Everything is changing, moving, time runs and runs and runs and—a-and it's not easy even looking at you, Jack, because you're wrong,” the Master begs, meeting his eyes with that last sentence that makes Jack's skin crawl, partly at the memory of the uncomfortable burning sensation from the stet radiation and partly because of _the memory itself._

But that's fine. It's _fine._ Because this time, even though he's quoting the Doctor, Jack knows the Master was there, disguised as Professor Yana, but there nevertheless. And so, there's an explanation for how _exact_ this quote is, even if there isn't for the other ones. 

“ _Aaand_ he got his charm back, he's fine now,” Rory comments with an eyeroll, exasperated but also relieved, while Amy chuckles. 

“He likes to insult species, especially when he's stressed,” she tells the rest of Torchwood, who are torn between amusement and feeling insulted in Jack's behalf, but Jack himself can only huff as an image of Rose's mischievous grin comes to mind. 

It looks like that's a Time Lord trait, instead of a Doctor one. 

“You are. I can't help it,” the Master continues, eyes tightening in pain as he grimaces, and Jack shifts so that he can lower them both onto their knees instead of keeping the Master up by his jacket, grabbing his shoulders to keep him from faceplanting. “I'm a Time Lord. It's instinct. It's in my guts. You're a fixed point in time and space. You're a _Fact._ That's never meant to happen.” 

“I know,” Jack answers with a crooked smile, before dropping it in favor of seriousness, meeting the Master's eyes. “Isn't my presence making things worse?” 

“ _No!”_ he exclaims, strangled, and a hand shoots out to grab Jack's wrist in a vice grip, to everyone's surprise. “Everything's changing but you're _not._ I can't keep up, I'm lost, _adrift._ Please, _stay.”_

And Jack looks deep into his eyes for a second longer, ignoring what Gwen and Amy are telling him – and sighs. 

“Alright. Hold on, we'll get you fixed up,” he tells him before lifting him up bridal style, and the Master slumps against his chest with a cross of a sigh and a sob, eyes falling closed. “You two, where's the TARDIS?” 

“You can't—” 

“I won't go in! But the only one who can help the Master is the Doctor, and that means we need to get to the TARDIS,” Jack explains, not even bothered anymore about the reminders that he can't see the Doctor, just sighing and giving the two hesitant companions a reassuring smile. “We can drive you there, and then you can take him in and get him checked up. The only thing I ask is that you get the Doctor to tell you all he knows about what's going on. All he _can_ tell, of course,” he asks, shifting his smile to a crooked grin, and, after exchanging a look, Amy nods. 

“Alright. We'll see what we can do.” 

And, with that said, Ianto leaves to fetch the SUV while the others move the boxes of equipment closer to the exit, so their departure can be as swift as possible. Gwen is the only one to step out of the alley, to talk to Andy about keeping the crime scene closed, while Jack sits the Master's limp form on one of the boxes, though he keeps a hand on his shoulder to help him stay focused, and Amy immediately takes the space next to him so he's leaning on her. 

She looks worried, as if _the Master_ was someone truly deserving of it, and while Rory doesn't join the pile, he still kneels in front of the Master and starts checking his vitals and the bandages on his right hand. Owen scowls, insulted, though Tosh calms him down with a gentle squeeze of his forearm and a quick smile. 

They're worried for their friend, and fussing over him is the only thing they can do to assuage that worry. 

Owen rolls his eyes but wipes the scowl off his face, so Tosh lets his arm go. 

Jack is on the fence about those two, sure of how good they can be to each other but also how much damage can be done if things don't work out. Both Owen and Tosh have demonstrated in the last year how much they are willing to do when it comes to a loved one, and while Jack wishes them the best, he still doesn't want to see them hurt. 

“Wait, so they're not Torchwood?” Andy asks at the other side of the plastic, voice louder as a result of moving closer to it. 

Either Gwen is coming back in, or they're stepping away from the masses. Since there are no footsteps to go with the voices, Jack bets on the second. 

“No, they're just giving us a hand. They're from UNIT.” 

“UNIT? As in Unified Intelligence Taskforce? The UN's elite group for all things weird and alien?” 

Jack huffs, grinning at that, while the others look either bored, interested, or confused, in the case of the civilians. 

“If you want to call it that,” Gwen agrees with a smile in her voice. “Just, keep this place closed, alright?” 

“Will do. One more thing. Was Saxon always a UNIT spy or was he recruited after or… Well, you know. Is he an actual alien or something?” Andy asks, and though he has lowered his voice, he's still clearly audible to the group behind the plastic, so Jack grimaces. 

Oh, this will be fun to expla— 

“Spatial genetic multiplicity,” the Master calls, loud enough that Gwen peeks into the plastic, startled, with Andy looking over her shoulder. “An echo and repetition of physical traits across time. Or, to put it plainly for your primitive minds, an extremely lucky combination of genetic traits that, without there being a blood relation, results in a mirror image of another person. Or, even simpler, a 'long lost twin'. Now stop asking stupid questions and let's get out of here,” he explains, grumbling the last part and burying his face in Amy's shoulder. 

Gwen exchanges a startled grin with Jack but pulls back before he can do more than blink in surprise. Amy rolls her eyes with a grin even as she hugs the Master closer, while Rory turns to the others with a grin that looks more like a grimace. 

“That actually means he likes you,” he tells them with a shrug, and Jack doesn't bother hiding his scoff. 

“I would've never guessed.” 

“Uh, Raggedy Man? What are you doing?” Amy asks, catching their attention, and Jack frowns as he sees the Master bury his face in her neck sniffing audibly. 

“Amelia? Is that you? You don't look like you,” he asks as he opens his eyes, unfocused but not as much as before. 

“I grew up. Remember?” 

“No, you got old.” 

“Oi!” 

“You don't look like you but you smell like you… Where's Rory? Does he have a new face too?” the Master asks, ignoring her indignation, as he rolls his head to analyze the man kneeling in front of him. “Mickey? What happened to your beard? I liked the beard.” 

“There's _no way_ you met Mickey Smith,” Jack exclaims before his brain can stop him, and, this time, the Master lolls his head to stare up at him with a 'no duh' look. “He's in a parallel universe!” 

“Time travel,” he deadpans, and lets his head fall to Amy's shoulder again. 

Jack's blush doesn't improve when he hears even Tosh and Owen snicker at him. His own team! Yes, it had been a dumb question, but still! 

Fortunately for Jack's dignity, Ianto chooses that moment to come around, and everyone's focus goes back to the job at hand. 

Of course, the SUV only has seven seats. They're eight. And, as the resident fixed point and injured Time Lord, it falls to Jack to have the Master sitting on his lap. 

“For the record, I am completely _against_ this,” he scowls, unable to do anything else, as he wraps his arms around the dozing Time Lord to keep him from falling to the floor. 

Amy and Rory sit at his sides, while Tosh and Owen are in front of them. At the front, Ianto is at the wheel while Gwen rides shotgun, though she makes sure to turn around to give Jack a huge grin. 

“What, having a hot blond guy literally craving your presence for the sake of his sanity?” Owen mocks, earning a snort from Gwen and a grin from Tosh, while Amy and Rory grimace. 

“Ew, that's like hearing about your cool uncle's hot escapades,” Amy comments with a shudder, and Rory drops his head back while covering his eyes with his hands. 

“I did _not_ need that image.” 

“You wouldn't say that if you knew what he's capable of,” Jack threatens, and when Owen gives him a look that dares him to try, Jack decides to oblige him. “The Master has conquered worlds, destroyed planets, enslaved entire civilizations… He conquered Earth using the Toclafane, killed a tenth of the population. He would have set out to conquer the universe if the Doctor hadn't stopped him and reversed time, to the moment after Saxon killed President Winters. For _a whole year,_ he kept me chained aboard the _Valiant,_ dropping by whenever the fancy struck him to kill me in a way he hadn't tried yet. He starved me, had me beaten to death, shot, asphyxiated, _burnt._ For a year, he kept the Earth under his merciless thumb. He turned Europe into a nuclear wasteland, destroyed Japan… One. Whole. Year. If it hadn't been for the Doctor, _that_ would have been your future. Or, what, did you think the order to investigate something in the Himalayas was genuine?” he asks with a humorless grin, meeting the wide-eyed and horrified looks of the other occupants in the car, including the two civilians and Ianto's eyes through the rearview mirror. “But the Doctor came through. He reversed time, made it so that whole year never happened. And he didn't want to kill him, did you know? He actually wanted to take the Master alive, keep him locked in the TARDIS for eternity, despite how that would mean _he_ would have to be locked in it too. Only, Lucy Saxon shot him before the Doctor could take him away. And instead of regenerating, the Master decided to die in the Doctor's arms. The last two of their species, and the Master chose to _die,_ just to spite his old friend turned enemy,” he adds, bitterness filling him as he remembers the Doctor's pain, and how neither Jack nor Martha had been able to help him with that. 

And yet, here the Master is now, alive and – not 'well', not at the moment, but alive. Somehow, the bastard managed to come back from the dead, like he did at the end of the universe, only, this time, it looks like he decided to accept the Doctor's offer. _How_ that happened and _why_ the Doctor trusts him around his new companions, Jack just can't understand. 

He really can't wait for that part of his 'personal future'. He has some choice words for the Doctor that are not to be repeated in polite company. 

The rest of the ride goes by in silence, broken only by some nonsensical murmurs from the Master, like an equation that he doesn't resolve, a comment about how he likes 'chubby chickens' that makes almost everyone snort in amusement, and something about a sad little man benefitting from watching the _Teletubbies,_ among other things, but he stays in that mostly asleep state he fell into after Jack picked him up in the alley. 

The TARDIS is in another alley, slightly scratched and a paler blue than Jack remembers, but he feels his heart speed up just at the sight of her. The Master stirs in his arms, blinking his eyes open – and tenses. 

“The TARDIS is gone. The Doctor is gone,” he whispers, but Jack simply pushes the comment away, since the TARDIS is right in front of them. 

He's not sure which misadventure that is from, but sincerely, he doesn't care. He'll finally be rid of the Master now, and maybe the Doctor will give him a call to help them sort the Rift's restlessness and the temporal void, but this is it. No more crazy Time Lord in Cardiff, thank you very much. 

Amy tries the door while Jack helps Rory shoulder the Master's tense body, still unable to properly support himself, but it doesn't bulge. 

“Uh, Raggedy Man, please tell me you still have the key,” she asks as she turns to them with a grimace, but the Master frowns and lifts a tremulous hand— 

The snap of his fingers echoes in the alley for but a moment, but nothing happens. 

“Great, he's lost in Wonderland again,” Rory groans, trying to adjust his bulk, and Amy steps up to the Master to rummage in the pockets of his leather jacket, though the Time Lord himself seems completely oblivious to her presence, snapping his fingers a couple more times before letting his hand fall. 

“Found it!” Amy chirps as she steps away from them, the key in her hands – and freezes as her eyes meet the Master's. “Raggedy Man? Hey, what's wrong?” 

“I _can't…_ I am not… The Doctor is _dead,”_ the Master croaks with a clearly tearful voice, shoulders trembling, and Jack tenses with a sharp inhale. “Amy, the Doctor _is dead._ He's dead, I killed him,” he sobs, and Jack finds himself in front of the Master in two long steps, pulling him up by his jacket once again so that his unfocused and tear-filled eyes can focus on his own with a gasp. “Captain…?” 

“What are you talking about? _Where's the Doctor?”_ he hisses threateningly, so tense as he stops himself from punching the Master that his whole body shakes. 

“The Doctor's gone,” the Master answers plainly, with no hesitation, and with his eyes focused on the present, on the _here_ and _now,_ before he tilts his head to look at the TARDIS over Jack's shoulder with growing dread and his breath quickening. “Gone, they're all gone, everyone is _dead.”_

“ _No!_ No, that's not true!” Amy exclaims, hesitating for a moment before rushing to the TARDIS door and fiddling with the lock. “Let's get you to the infirmary and fix you up. Everything will be better once—No… No, it can't…” 

“What happened to the TARDIS?” Rory questions, eyes wide and voice chocked, while the rest of Torchwood, standing behind him, frown in confusion. 

“Gone. Everyone's gone. I'm the only one left, but it's coming back. It's coming back and I'm the only one left and everyone's going to die,” the Master whispers, eyes losing focus, and, feeling dread slowly replace the anger in his blood, Jack turns around— 

And freezes. 

Amy is standing in front of the doors, but both of them are wide open so the inside is easy to see past her trembling figure. 

It's a box. The police box is not the TARDIS, it's a _box._ There's only wooden walls and empty space inside the as-big-as-the-outside blue box. This is not the TARDIS, this is just _a police box._

A police box that opened with the TARDIS key. 

“It can't be,” Jack manages to say past the chokehold on his throat, slowly lowering the Master so that he can stand on his feet again, if leaning heavily against Jack. “That's – That can't be the TARDIS, that can't…” 

“Gone. The TARDIS is gone, and the Doctor is gone, and it's just me now and it's coming back. It's coming back and everyone's going to die,” the Master mutters again, his hands wrapping tightly around Jack's upper arms so he can push himself off Jack's chest and meet his eyes with completely serious, focused and _terrified_ gold-green eyes. “That's what you've opened, right in the center of Cardiff. What was born in the final days. _Hell.”_

“What we've – you mean the Rift? The temporal void and the murders, all of that is coming through the Rift? But we sealed it! We sent Tommy back to 1918, he sealed the Rift! It's not at risk of opening anymore!” Jack hisses, clutching the Master's arms as tightly as the Master does his, feeling his unease and fear grow as he sees them fester in the Time Lord's gaze. 

“Something is returning,” the Master whispers, tremors increasing as he looks down, losing focus, before he forces himself back to the present once more with a shake of his head. 

Jack looks at the empty police box that should be the TARDIS, at Amy and Rory, holding onto each other's hands in worry, and at his team, staring at them in wariness as they wait for Jack to figure things out. 

“The Doctor? The Doctor's returning? How?” Jack asks, turning back to the Master, who scowls with a huff that has the benefit of slowing his breathing as he glares up at him. 

“Don't you ever listen? Not someone, _something,”_ he hisses, though, a moment later, his anger deflates to leave only fear and uncertainty. “Not just the Daleks, but the Skaro Degradations, the Horde of Travesties, the Nightmare Child, the Could Have Been King with his army of Meanwhiles and Neverweres. In the alley, that Neverwere, that was just the vanguard. But if the Rift continues to expand, if the time lock's broken, then everything's coming through. Don't you see? It's already happening. It's spilling onto Earth, drop by drop. And once it's free, no longer locked away, it will rage until creation itself ceases to be.” 

“ _What_ will rage? _What_ is coming?” Jack hisses, carefully shaking the Master before he can stop himself, and the Master meets Jack's eyes. 

“The Time War, Captain Harkness. The Time War is coming.”

**Author's Note:**

> The title, like with _Silence in the Catacombs_ and _Forest of the Angels,_ is a nod to _The Empty Child,_ Jack's first appearance. The _something vast stirs in the dark_ quote is from the Elder of the Ood in _The End of Time._
> 
> Don't ask me, I don't know anything about temporal theory either.
> 
> And the characters _literally_ did whatever they wanted with this one, from turning it into a two-parter to most everything that happened in it. I'm just as confused and flabbergasted, and the second part is coming along much in the same way. These characters have too much personality, it's _hard_ to keep them out of trouble.
> 
> Hopefully, the next one will be up soon. I want to know how this is going to end just as much as everyone else.


End file.
